Hawkers Asian Street Food — Restaurant in Dr. Phillips

My first and only Hawkers location has been the one on Mills. It's amazing, and there's no reason to change locations. But alas, for my birthday, I had to travel closer to a friend's house to get her to come to my dinner, so I ended up trying out this new Hawkers.

And of course. It's also banging. I don't know about you, but Hawkers really cannot do anything wrong in terms of their food. Delicious, hot, crispy, saucy, everything you want. The service, though, well, has suffered at this particular location. The servers themselves, no, they're great, lovely.

But the massive amount of to-go orders they grind out really puts a slowdown on the kitchen for the dine-in customers. Like, it was bad. The amount of people I had with me have been in and out of Hawkers before in an hour. This same style meal took over two. Good thing we're easy going folks, but more grumpy types would have complained, I know it.

Not gonna take away a star, since literally the only thing that could fix that would be to build another kitchen for to-go orders, but that's silly. So anyway, on with the food. I'll make this quick, because I ate a lot.

Roti Canai (Rip. Dip. Repeat. Two Malaysian flatbreads, served with a side of our signature curry sauce). No brainer, delicious, not very filling. Get this every time, order an extra roti or two if you have a big table of people.

Korean Twice Fried Wings (Sauced in garlic gochujang and topped with peanuts, sesame and cilantro). Imagine the crispiest wings of your life. These are crispier. Banging wings.

Soup Dumplings (Classic xialongbao filled with pork and a rich bone broth – a recipe that’s been passed down from generation to generation. Served with traditional black vinegar and fresh ginger). These are new! They are very small, so don't expect an explosion of soup, but that's probably just so dumb people don't burn themselves. Try these at least once!

Seoul Hot Chicken Baos (Juicy 24-hour brined chicken thigh, deep-fried and sauced in garlic gochujang. Topped with a spicy house-made pickle). Another one I get every single time. Crispy, spicy chicken with a soft, chewy bao. Amazing. Amazing. Amazing.

Roast Duck Baos (Two fluffy bao buns, filled with five-spice hand-pulled duck and crispy skin with housemade black vinegar hoisin, cucumbers, spring onions, and cilantro). Ehh. You can skip these. I love duck, but if you're gonna put duck on a bao, you should put enough on the bao for at least two bites of duck. I think this is new? Poorly constructed.

Chow Faan (Classic fried rice packed with chicken, shrimp, char siu, eggs, onions and soy sauce). These is by no means unique, but this is also by far my favorite thing here. It's pure comfort food and childhood for me. Love, love, love.

Overall, this place is good. Don't hesitate to come here. The only thing I have is if there's even a chance you want to take the part home, go ahead and Uber it. You'll probably even get the food...

I’ve always wanted to try out Hawkers and this past weekend I got the chance. Three adults and two kids, we got to the restaurant just after noon and we seated promptly. Our waitress, Ms. Demetris, welcomed us and we told her it was our first time. She gave us an overview of the menu and explained that the dishes are served as they come out from the kitchen.

While you could certainly request a couple plates and then others later, we put in all of ours at the same time, trying to select an option or two from each of the categories: Chinese BBQ Pork Bao, Soup Dumplings, Spring Rolls, Korean Twice Fried Wings, Coconut Shrimp, Bulgogi Steak Lettuce Wraps, Pad Thai, and Chicken Lo Mein.

This gave us a variety of proteins and vegetables and a selection from different nationalities (Chines, Korean, Thai, etc.). Bao we’re out first with their fluffy, pillowy goodness and sweet and sticky BBQ pork filling. The Korean wings were next and were crispy with just a bit of heat from the Gochujang sauce and some crunch from the peanut crumbles. Spring rolls were warm and crispy served with a slightly sweet clear dipping sauce. Coconut shrimp came out next, which could have had more coconut in the batter, but still had a golden brown fried color. Chicken Lo Mein and Pad Thai noodles were next. Both were full of flavor and provided some heft after the small plates. Bulgogi steak was the last of the entrees that had kimchi, cucumbers, and bean sprouts as condiments for the fresh lettuce and seasoned steak.

The pacing for our order worked out in the end as we had a chance to enjoy and savor each dish before the next arrived without any long wait between the arrival of the next plate. My regret for this review is not taking a picture of each plate as it came out. But who can take pictures at a time like that?

To top it all off, we ordered the Jo-Hé Bag O’ Donuts and the Banana Spring Rolls for dessert. Donuts were covered in powdered sugar but the Carmel sauce set it apart. The banana fried inside the wrap was good, but you have to like banana to enjoy it. A crumble of Nutter Butters with fresh blueberries and a raspberry drizzle gave an almost PB&J quality.

Everything we tried was delicious. It all comes straight from the kitchen, so it’s served warm and doesn’t sit under a heat lamp waiting for other plates. Service was very good with recommendations given too. All around, this was a great experience for us. We will definitely be back to try other plates but keep some favorites on...

-My wife and I went here last night for our anniversary and it was not a good experience.

-The hostess sat us in the worst possible seat right by where all the servers and kitchen staff walk. The restaurant was empty because it was early so there was no reason to seat us there, i had to go ask to be moved. It was like being escorted to the front row of a movie theater, when all the other seats are empty, made no sense.

-Our server was not personable, he wasn't rude he just seemed really disinterested in his job. throughout the night I had to wave him down twice.

-First we had the Thai iced teas and they were ok, but seemed watered down and not sweet like we have come to expect.

-For an appetizer we ordered the summer rolls, there was something off about them but we weren't sure until after we ate them and were looking at the menu again and realized they had forgot to put in the noodles and bean sprouts.

-The food took a really long time to come out, and for some reason they brought me my food first, after about 10 minutes i had to flag down our server and he went and found my wife's food, no apology or explanation as to why it was so late but we could see the commotion in the kitchen while he was tracking it down, had he been more attentive maybe he would have known it never came.

-My food was really good though warm by the time i got to eat it because i was waiting for my wife's food to come, however my wife's food was sweet and not spicy like she had ordered. At that point we had waited so long we didnt want to wait for them to make something correctly so she ate it.

-When the sticky rice dessert came, the rice was really hard. I had never had it before so i thought maybe it was supposed to be that way, but half way through i had to flag down the server and after pointing it out he looked at it and said it never should have been like that. He comped the dessert but never asked if we wanted another which i would have preferred over a comp. Also apparently they were out of forks (according to whoever brought our dessert) because we had to eat our food with spoons which made no sense.

-The receipt was probably the only thing that came out correct during this entire experience. We have been here multiple times and never had such an awful experience. This was a failure at every level from the kitchen to the server to the hostess to the management and how they run...